Who wants old revolutionaries making the law?

Adverts couched in that strange lying English ask: 'Are you having trouble resettling? Email such and such.'

This is code for lawyers who know their way around the rules that allow the new Europeans to come and make a living here.

I have no problems with the desire of people who want to better their lot.

But, as we lurch through Ken Livingstone's London, advertising on the 209 how to bend immigration rules is difficult to stomach.

On the same journey passengers are reading that British troops will have to go back to Kosovo to sort out the visceral hatreds of people whom we are now asked to accept as civilised members of our community.

And there is the inevitable presence of more police officers.

Death in London courtesy of terrorists in the next 12 months has been flagged up by Government and police with a disturbing casualness - as if they are rather looking forward to it as a means to justify something tucked not too far up their sleeves.

What this is, I suspect, is new laws.

In particular, one new law: the right of the authorities to investigate private lives of British citizens through telephone intercepts and to use that evidence to convict people in court.

Most of you will want terrorists caught quickly and sent to prison for a long time. Most of you will, I suspect, be bemused as to how the Government plans to do this. This is, after all, a Government that has given out deeply confusing messages.

Last week, Lord Woolf, the Lord Chief Justice and no flake when it comes to handing down big porridge, decided David Blunkett's new anti-terrorism laws were not worth a candle and freed a Libyan suspect who had been held in London without trial.

The unnamed gentleman is advised he can claim damages from the Government.

Watch out for the compensation police to fill the gap here. There is a drink in this for Cherie and her chums.

The next time I'm on the 209 I will scribble down the helpline number for the Libyan One.

From this, it is clear that in the war against terrorism our Government is worthless in the courts. It is now going for Plan B, something which, I fear, will be turned on you and me.

It now intends to use information gleaned from secretly intercepting phone conversations as evidence to secure a conviction and lengthy prison sentence.

On the face of it, this seems not just reasonable but essential. Who could argue that, if needed to convict a terrorist, it should not be implemented with haste?

But let us pause a moment. Let us consider the nature of this Government and how it is all too willing to abuse power and create phantoms to justify its actions.

Certainly we should use the full force of the State to crush our enemies.

But, in giving this administration the right to listen in to our most private lives and produce it as evidence in court, we should question its motives.

New Labour has always been a totalitarian organisation bowing before the Buddha Blair.

Like any ideology, it demands complete obedience and can justify every action.

Like any ideological movement, it always seeks to create a nebulous enemy and, while terrorism is a reality, do not underestimate the way this administration will use the bogeyman to frighten us into agreeing to new laws that will be used against us.

I have never been of the school of journalists which thrives on the view that our findings are subject to State monitoring.

Ours is a trade which is a magnet for conspiracy theorists. But there has of late been deeply disturbing evidence of police in the Thames Valley secretly seizing records of journalists' telephone conversations.

Quite why the police, who have admitted they were wrong and paid legal costs to the reporters, should have resorted to this extreme subterfuge is not clear.

It certainly seems to be the action of police with political motivations rather than those seeking to resolve criminality in a way acceptable to the citizens it serves.

It is a disturbing example. The secret policeman sits uneasy in our democracy, even in times of war and the threat of terrorism.

Indeed, it is during such times that we should be on our guard. In circumscribing your own freedoms you do the work of the terrorist for him.

We have a Security Service which is not accountable in public and reports only to the Prime Minister. We live in times when we should look to these departments for reassurance.

But the war in Iraq - with the lie over Saddam's weapons capability - has left the credibility of the security services in tatters.

Now we are asked to bring in reasonable-sounding laws proposed by the most reasonable of men: former beacons of a party that was all for freedom of expression and ideas yet whose senior lieutenants are old revolutionaries turned policemen.